Tornado survivors look to the future

Voices from a tragic day speak of rebuilding homes ... and lives

Mar. 2, 2013

Doug Imhoff, whose home in Piner was destroyed by a tornado in March of 2012, carries trim strips into the basement of the new home he has rebuilt on the site. A self-employed contractor, Imhoff rebuilt the house himself using borrowed tools. / The Enquirer/Patrick Reddy

You could find Doug Imhoff standing on his front porch or backyard deck whenever a storm approached before last March.

That’s not the case today. After surviving a deadly EF4 tornado with wind speeds of up to 175 mph, the 40-year-old Piner man gets anxious during storms.

“In the middle of the night, if the wind picks up, it wakes me up immediately,” Imhoff said. “I’ll turn the TV on, and there’s actually been a couple of nights where I’ve put headphones on with my MP3 player and just turned the music up loud to drown out the wind, just so I could get back to sleep.”

Nine months after a tornado transformed most of his brick, ranch-style home into a pile of rubble, Imhoff moved into his new home. Using borrowed tools, the self-employed contractor rebuilt the three-bedroom home he shared with his wife, Tina, on the same site.

“When we first moved in here, we had a couch, a love seat, a bed and a Christmas tree,” Imhoff recalled. “We didn’t have a lot of furniture, but it was awesome to be back in our own home.”

On the day of the tornado, Imhoff had just sought shelter in his basement when he heard his french doors blow open. He recalls “a loud crashing and banging upstairs” as the tornado slammed his furniture against the walls, ripped a gabled roof off his deck and prompted the exterior brick to cave in on what used to be the rooms of his home.

Imhoff’s wife, who had been on the phone to him, asked: “What was that?”

Her husband replied: “I think our house is gone. I see daylight, and it’s raining on me.”

By the end of March, Doug Imhoff plans to put the finishing touches on the new home that he and Tina moved into in mid-December. He’s especially grateful to the many subcontractors who’ve also become good friends:

Wally Shelton with Tyco Construction, as well as the workers with Flanigan Heating and Plumbing, and Dave Wagner Electric. He’s also appreciative of the Long Term Recovery Committee, which provided gift cards for home building supplies and periodically checked in with his family to see if they needed any financial assistance.

“I told my wife that I’ll be glad when March 2 comes and goes because obviously that date has kind of engraved itself on my mind,” Imhoff said earlier this week. “I associate the beginning of March now with the tornado. In my head it’s like, ‘Here comes the bad part of the year.’ I just want to get through the first part of March to get it out of my head ...”

Patty Neuspickel

For Patty Neuspickel, the loss of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Morning View “was almost like a death in the family.”

The 56-year-old Pendleton County resident had been baptized in the little country church, which is commonly known as St. Mary’s Church. Neuspickel’s mother was married there, and six generations of her family worshiped from its historic pews before the church was leveled last March 2 by a tornado.

No decision has been made at the diocesan level on whether the church will be rebuilt.

“Even if it is rebuilt, they’ll never bring that church back,” said Neuspickel, who grew up about three miles away. “My cousins and I grew up in that church. We’d go up there on Memorial Day and sit in the same pews where our parents and grandparents had sat.”

Founded in 1869, the latest church had been built in 1915 on a hilltop overlooking a river valley. Since the early 1970s, Masses were held only in the spring and summer months because another nearby church, St. Matthew’s, was more economical to heat. However, St. Mary’s Church with its breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside, continued to be a popular place for weddings.

“The women would raise extra chickens for the fried chicken and they’d bring the beans and tomatoes out of their garden,” she said.

In recent years, Neuspickel served as the caretaker of the seasonal worship site and adjoining cemetery.

The day after the tornado hit, Neuspickel’s family joined others in the community in salvaging artifacts from the church. A painting by a student of artist Frank Duveneck, some statues, a processional cross, candlesticks and a few stained glass windows were among the items saved.

“We just couldn’t bring ourselves to throw anything away,” Neuspickel said. “Some of the things we saved won’t be able to be restored, but others will be.”

Amy Heeger

Exactly one year after a tornado devastated southern Kenton County, members of Piner Baptist Church are hosting a remembrance/celebration.

The organizer of today’s event is Amy Heeger. For nine days after the tornado, the Piner native helped dispatch thousands of volunteers into the storm-stricken community. As one of the few public buildings that still had power, the church temporarily became a relief center.

There will be some brief remarks and a moment of silence for four Northern Kentuckians who lost their lives in the tornado at the gathering.

“The goal of the day is to let people come in and laugh, cry, share their stories, (and) do whatever they need to do,” Heeger said. “It’s just a day to celebrate each other and what we went through as a community, whether you’re a volunteer or a first responder or someone who was affected by the storm.”

Within hours of the March 2 tornado, people began showing up at the church with food and offers of help. Because of downed power lines and trees blocking roads, it took two days before public safety workers would let church members send volunteers to areas needing help.

Then-associate pastor B.J. Donahue used social media to recruit volunteers and solicit donations of needed items. Church members and public safety workers also did daily drive-bys on local roads in the tornado’s path, and Heeger fielded calls from her brother, a Kenton County deputy sheriff, on addresses that needed help.

“If someone had a chain saw, we knew people who needed chain saws,” Heeger said. “If they had a Bobcat, we knew people who needed Bobcats. A lot of times, they just needed hands to go pick up debris in farmers’ hayfields.”

For nine days, church members provided direct relief to a stricken community.

Long-time church member Karen Cain, who just happened to have a vacation scheduled the week after the tornado, was one of many who stepped up, Heeger said.

Cain organized food donations that were pouring in and oversaw the preparation of meals for storm victims and volunteers in the field.

On the last day the church provided direct relief, the local Kiwanis cooked a pancake breakfast for about 2,500 volunteers.

“You hear such bad stories all the time,” Heeger said. “But when the tornado happened, everybody stepped up in huge numbers. We learned there are a lot of good, caring people in our community. It just renews your faith in people again.”